still piecing it together

Hello all! After an absence of quite a few months, I finally have a moment to do a little more genealogy. I also am excited to say I'm attending a conference this week that includes several seminars on Galicia, the area where my grandparents are from. I'm learning quite a bit.

Thanks to the help of Matthew Bielawa, who runs the Genealogy of Eastern Galicia site, I was able to look at a Galician gazetteer that contained some stats about Lodyna, grandma's village. It looks like it used to have about 700 people. And then I was also able to use Steve Morse's one step website to search others who came from Lodyna--and it turns out that at least several of them (so far from what I've seen) came to Johnstown.

So in some ways, the mystery grows, and in others, I feel like I'm learning much more about the history and culture of this interesting place. I'm grateful for the help of others, and I look forward to sharing more with you about the Yacynychs (and others) as I find it!

p.s.

I'm sorry this blog's been a little inactive...I went back to grad school, so I haven't had as much time to work on genealogy. I know I'll pick it up again soon, though, I promise!

My grandparents

I'm so pleased that I was finally able to scan the picture I have my grandparents (the only one around, as far as I know) and post it here. If anyone recognizes them or has a story to tell, please do?

I definitely think my aunts all looked like my grandma. As for my grandpa, I think my dad and I have his eyes.

They look so serious, don't they? I know just from anecdotes that their lives were pretty hard, so it's no wonder. Still wish I could have known them!

Merry Christmas

Got a beautiful Christmas card from my cousin Arlene, reminding me of the holiday. If you celebrate this one as your official day, Kristos Razdayetsya! :)

For those of you who might be curious about all the alternate spellings of a surname, and how those folks can be related, you might like this article. It does a nice job of explaining how close doesn't just count in horseshoes.

Enjoy!

a passing

Steve let me know that Michael Davich, my Great Uncle Jacob's grandson, passed away on December 24th.

Reading the obituary, and all the comments people made on the website about him, made me sad that I never got to know him. He sounds like he was a really great man, and will be missed by many people.

memory

Happy holidays to all of you--family and friends! (Of course, technically on the Orthodox calendar, it's not Christmas yet. That's January 7th.) That was always one of my favorite things growing up...getting to celebrate two Christmases, and stretching the holiday season out further. (OK, I admit, I loved the food, too! My mom got me some nut roll, and I bought some poppyseed to try my hand at making those foldover cookies.)

It was so good to be home this year. I feel like my genealogy research has made the celebrations richer and deeper. I got to stop at my grandparents' graves in the St. Petka cemetery, and finally found out the meaning of the inscription on their tombstone: "Vicnaja Pamjat" (it means "Eternal Memory").

I thought that was particularly fitting and speaks to why I'm doing the research. I've had some people say "why are you concerned with people who are dead and gone, you should pay more attention to life here and now". I disagree. I feel life is a balance of living in the present and reflecting on the past. I've been shaped by all the relatives who've gone before me. Their choices, their drive to come to a new country and face poverty, culture shock and hardship to make a good life for themselves and their family, stand as an example to me and have helped me be where I am today. To me, it's important to remember them and the sacrifices they made, the joys they had, their experiences...to tell their story. I hope that doing this in just a small part can help them to be remembered.

I was fortunate this time around to find some more information in obituaries and Johnstown city directories. I feel a little bit closer to unraveling the mystery of the various Yacynych families. I discovered that my Great Uncle Jacob and his wife lived several blocks away from George and Anna (Meketa) Yacynch. These are two of the lines I haven't been able to tie together, but it seems like too much of a coincidence that the Yacynychs came from Lodyna and lived so close together. If anyone can help make the connections, I would greatly appreciate it!

I also had a chance to visit Christ the Saviour, the church where my Aunt Irene and Uncle Steve attended for many years. It's a beautiful Orthodox church, and we sang a Christmas carol (in Rusyn? Ukrainian? not sure yet) that made me reflect on the holiday and family. I love the area I come from and that they're keeping old traditions alive. I hope it continues.

More soon. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and those you love!

Questions

I received the marriage licenses. They raise more questions than they answer. I've sent off some emails to family members with my findings to see what their thoughts are. When I have a good interpretation of it all, I'll report back!